The sixth of seven stages walking the John Muir Trail (JMT). This section was completed on 2 to 3 September 2010; days 18 to 19 of 21 days on the JMT. In summary this section went from the Golden Gate of the Sierra swingbridge crossing of Woods Creek, up the South Fork of Woods Creek to Glen Pass. Then downhill to Bubbs Creek junction, then up Bubbs Creek to Forester Pass. From the pass it was down to Shepherds Pass Junction at Tyndall Creek and then this section was completed when we made it to Bighorn Plateau.

Day 18: 2 September 2010. Woods Creek Junction campsite over Glen Pass to Campsite below Bullfrog Lake Junction. Before leaving in the morning I made use of an open toilet on the far side of the Golden Gate of the Sierra wooden swingbridge. The procedure here was to burn all of your used toilet paper. This was new experience for me and took me a few goes to get it right (not going to the toilet, but burning the toilet paper which does not burn all that well). There was a tin can there left for burning the toilet paper in. A rather uneventful morning heading up the South Fork of Woods Creek valley through some impressive foxtail pines until we reached Dollar Lake. Dollar Lake had spectacular view of the valley and mountains ahead, particularly Fin Dome. We then passed Arrowhead Lake with spectacular Bigelow’s sneezeweed growing on lake margins. This is like a mini sunflower. We then past Rae Lakes with excellent views to the Painted Lady and back to Fin Dome. We could see the general way ahead to Glen Pass. We had lunch by the Upper Rae Lake. We then made our way up to Glen Pass. At the bottom of this section I took the opportunity to finally get some photos of rock fringe. These spectacular pink flowers are an Epilobium and I had been wanting to get a photo of them for several days, but not when I had wanted to stop. We were a bit late for the best views from the top of the pass as the smoke had arrived from the west. We had a descent break on the top of the pass and then headed south. The smoke had become very thick by the time we had good views over Charlotte Lake. We continued to a suitable campsite below the junction with Bullfrog Lake (Campsite 11.04 in Wenk, 2007). The campsite had a stream nearby and was amongst lodgepole pines and foxtail pines. We meet another large older group soon afterwards and showed them a campsite nearby. Two others passed us shortly afterwards who were trying to complete the whole JMT in a week. They were hoping to Summit Mt Whitney the next day. We had two more nights planned before we were considering summiting Whitney. We watched the sunset and alpenglow lighting through the foxtail pines over the peaks; East and West Vidette, Center Peak and University Peak. I gave my ankle a small twist while taking photos, but was not really worse for wear the next morning. Day 18 Summary: 11.7 miles. Key locations: Golden Gate of the Sierra Swingbridge 8490 feet. Glen Pass 11,900 feet. Campsite below Bullfrog Lake Junction: 10,370 feet.

Day 19: 3 September 2010. Campsite near Bullfrog Lake Junction over Forester Pass to Bighorn Plateau. We started with a walk down to Vidette Meadows with good views over East Vidette and Bubbs Creek Valley. There were several groups camping at Vidette Meadows including a big party of California Conservation Corps who we would run into regularly throughout the day. It was an easy climb up the valley, but got steeper when we got close to Center Peak. From here we got views of the Kings Kern Divide and Mt Stanford. We continued to climb above treeline past lots of stunning alpine lakes. We were keen to make Forester Pass by lunchtime, so had only a couple of stops on the way up to the Pass. The last stop had a spectacular view back towards the mountains form where we had come from. On the way to the pass we past a large group on track workers doing track maintenance. Quite different to New Zealand track maintenance where mostly crowbars and bolder shifting and placement is used to reconstruct the track. We made it to Forester Pass for lunch. This was a narrow pass with less room on top than the other passes. To the south there were excellent views to the Kaweah Mountains and alpine grassland (tundra as they like to call it in the USA). This was quite different to the talus on the north side of the pass. Bob greeted us on the pass again and suggested we aim for Bighorn Plateau that night. We were not able to fill up our water containers at the last point we thought we could, so we did not stay on the top as long as we would have otherwise. There was quite a crowd on the pass, in relation to its confined space. We meet up with several groups we had not seen on the trail for several days. Heading down the north side of the pass there were several patches alpine gold, a very large bright coloured daisy, and some spectacular patches of rock fringe. We filled up our water bottles at the first crossing of Tyndall Creek, here we meet a large group of older walkers who we hadn’t seen for almost couple of weeks. We slowly made our way down through the alpine grasslands, and then as we went to cross Tyndall Creek some stands of trees. The walk up from Tyndall Creek to Bighorn Plateau was through foxtail pines. On top of Bighorn Plateau we had our first view of the Mt. Whitney massif. Bob pointed out which one was Mt. Whitney. It seemed like our walk was coming to an end even if we had another couple of days to go. The scenery here was amongst the best of the trail with Mt Russell to the north of Mt Whitney; Mt. Muir, Mt. to the south Mt Whitney, to the south was the Kaweah Mountains, to the west were the mountains of the Great Western Divide, and to the north was Mt. Tyndall. To top everything off was a large alpine tarn which we camped beside. Bob had shown us a great spot to camp for the night. I had a quick wash in the lake and then got busy taking photos. After we had eaten we were treated to an amazing sunset. The smoky skies from the west probably made the scene more spectacular. We had some intriguing mountain shadows in the sunset and the lighting on Mt Whitney was amazing. We had no idea that there had been a big earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand during the late morning of the days walk as we watched the sunset. I think we saw some alpenglow around Mt Whitney to the east, as the sun set to the west. Day 19 Summary: 15.5 miles. Key locations: Campsite near Bullfrog Lake Junction 10,370 feet. Bubbs Creek Junction 9515 feet. Forester Pass 13,100 feet. Tyndall Creek crossing 10,890 feet. Bighorn Plateau 11,420 feet.